NEW AD­VEN­TURES

WA­TER­FALLS AND COOL POOLS ARE THE OR­DER OF THE DAY – IF THE DRIVE TO REACH THEM DOESN’T PROVE TOO HAIRY

Hav­ing gone up a dress size af­ter overindulging in pretty Paia, we need an adren­a­line fix. Hawai­ians are real wa­ter ba­bies – per­haps the en­su­ing en­dor­phins af­ter a chilly fresh­wa­ter swim are an­other rea­son for their hap­pi­ness? We cer­tainly fall in love with swim­suit cul­ture, and are rarely out of the wa­ter. Some of the best nat­u­ral pools can be found along the in­fa­mous (thanks to its hair­pin bends) 64-mile Hãna High­way, which be­gins in Paia, but you need ven­ture along it for only two miles to find the al­lur­ing pools of Twin Falls. Here, we wan­der into the for­est and ne­go­ti­ate the rocky path for less than five min­utes be­fore the stag­ger­ingly blue pool comes into view. Al­though the falls are a pop­u­lar stop, we’re the sole swim­mers.

You’ll need a hire car on all the is­lands bar traf­fic-choked Oahu, but you might want to prac­tise be­fore tack­ling the road to Hãna: it’s dif­fi­cult to see what’s com­ing, the loops can be stom­ach-churn­ing, and the lo­cals drive at speeds that make my eyes wa­ter. It is worth it, though, for the spec­tac­u­lar ocean views, se­cluded pools and quaint stalls selling fresh co­conuts, pineap­ple and banana bread. We man­age the drive in a day – al­beit a long one, thanks to mul­ti­ple photo stops.

Our favourite water­fall is still to come on Big Is­land (which isn’t ac­tu­ally that big – it takes us just three hours to drive across). It is a truly oth­er­worldly morn­ing, lis­ten­ing to ukelele bands on lo­cal ra­dio as the arid, al­most lu­nar land­scape flashes by. Big Is­land’s ac­tive vol­cano has been erupt­ing on a rel­a­tively sta­ble ba­sis for years, and a sec­tion of it is now a Na­tional Park, where you can hike along the side of a huge crater.

The town of Hilo has a Bri­tish-sea­side vibe, with buzzy cafes, calm beaches and ice cream. We drive up a wind­ing hill lined with macadamia-nut or­chards to The Inn at Kulaniapia Falls, which has its own water­fall. Our room is one of the cheap­est, yet has a pri­vate pa­tio with views of the falls. Fall­ing asleep to the sound of flow­ing wa­ter makes for a bliss­ful night’s sleep, and af­ter break­fast we nip down and have the wild wa­ter all to our­selves.